He didn’t ask me about his swing. He didn’t ask about footwork at short, or getting more pop on his throws to first, or any of the stuff you think a young shortstop who’s already getting looks would want to talk about.
He asked me about somebody else’s parents.
There’s a kid on his team who wants his position. That kid’s parents, he told me, talk to the coach a lot. He’s smart and self-aware, easy to talk to, and he’d clearly turned this over in his head more than once before I heard about it: if he boots a ground ball, is that the thing that gets the other kid in? He wasn’t asking me to fix it. He wanted to know if he should just block it out of his mind, or just accept that it’s out of his hands.
This was an hour I spent on Zoom a few weeks ago with a client’s son. Not the client herself, who I’d worked with before, but her thirteen-year-old, at her request. She’d been in one of my live parent sessions months earlier, we’d stayed in touch since, and she reached out and said her son could use what she called a ‘Tony Talk’ — a confidence booster to help him stop being so hard on himself. I’ve been fortunate to work with a number of parents at this point, helping them help their kids play loose, with confidence, with joy. I hadn’t done it with a kid directly. I was a little nervous going in. An hour is a long time to hold a thirteen-year-old’s attention — I’m a dad to 13-year-old twin boys — and I didn’t know what he actually needed until he started telling me.
What he told me, over that hour, wasn’t difficult to understand. So much of it is common among young ballplayers. This kid works hard. He cares, maybe more than he lets on. He’s smart about the game in a way that isn’t common at his age. He’s the starting shortstop on his travel team and bats second or third in the lineup, counted on to deliver. He told me he gets really nervous in big moments, holds onto an error longer than he should, and is hard on himself in the same way perfectionists are hard on themselves, where good isn’t good enough because it wasn’t perfect.
I’ve written about the dad who stands at the backstop every game, sweating, meaning well but making the game harder for his son. This was a different shape of the same problem. This kid wasn’t being pressured by his own parents. He was absorbing pressure that belonged to somebody else's family. A fight over a starting spot was playing out in conversations he wasn't part of. He felt all of it anyway, and carried the weight of it into practices and games.
We talk a lot about what parent pressure does. We don’t talk much about what it does to the other kids on the roster who have nothing to do with it and absorb it anyway.
I've attended a lot of games over 8 years and I’ve seen and heard a lot, including dads barking at other people's kids in a big moment, mine included. I've also received unsolicited advice from parents, and I’ve watched similar exchanges between other parents, about a kid struggling at the plate or on the mound. This is different than two dads whose kids pitch, for example, talking about what they’re seeing on the mound that inning. I love those chats, but offering up advice or yelling at another parent’s kid can create problems.
I asked the young man I was talking to what he could actually control out there. He got there almost immediately, on his own: effort, hustle, attitude. He couldn’t control whether that parent talked to the coach. He couldn’t control what the coach did with it, or another kid’s desire to play his position.
“Do you think there’s a team anywhere out there at any level where only one person wants to play short?” I asked. “It’s a premium position. A lot of kids want to play there, right?” He nodded. “Also, there’s even a chance that those parents are annoying that coach by talking to him so much, right? You can’t control that either.” He laughed.
What he could control, I told him, was putting in the work, showing up locked in, being the kind of teammate and ballplayer that made the coach’s decision easy, and letting go of the rest. He already knew the answer. He just needed someone to tell him it was allowed.
We zoomed in on a few other things he wanted to talk through. He told me, for example, that car rides to a game are very difficult because he’s constantly going back and forth between what could go right and what could go wrong. He also wanted to know how to let go of a bad at-bat and an error in the field.
Like a lot of kids, he’s focused on results and outcomes, not the process. But it didn’t take him long to get back to what he can control and what he can’t, that the game is humbling, and that he’s not any good to himself or his teammates and coaches if he’s not present. “Be where your feet are,” I told him. “We never want to burn our house down, right?” I walked him through what to do before a game and during a game to ramp down the pressure and stay present. He seemed to like that. We also talked about what I meant when I told him, “Pressure is a privilege and nerves are normal.”
I went into that call not entirely sure what it would look like with a young client instead of an adult client. I came out of it feeling good. He sounded lighter at the end than he did at the start.
His mom emailed me a few days later: “He seriously keeps telling me, ‘Mom Tony liked me, he believed in me and I won’t be burning my own house down!’ What you shared did not fall on deaf ears!”
I loved hearing that, but I don’t know yet how much of it he will carry into his next tournament. I do know that for an hour, a good kid who works hard and cares too much was able to put down something that was never his to carry in the first place.
Go Deeper
I coach players and parents to help kids play loose, with confidence and joy. The game gets harder, and our relationships suffer, when we add pressure.
If you’ve gotten the car ride home wrong, caught yourself coaching from the stands, or gotten caught up in the comparison trap, you’re not alone. None of us want to get these moments wrong. The good news: it’s fixable, and it starts with two short guides you can use before your kid’s next game.
Grab your parent playbooks — $20
Want something more specific worked through — your kid, your situation? I do that too.
Email me your issue and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours — $50
Book a coaching session aka Tony Talks, for you or your kid — $150/45 minutes
Lastly, every week I drop new reels on Instagram: @tonymanolatos. Some are related to my essays. Some aren’t. It’s a place for parents to connect with me and each other, to share stories that are funny or moving, do’s and don’ts, and more.
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What a great opportunity for that boy to talk to someone like you. Great advice . . . and don't sell yourself short . . . I think that is a message that is going to stick. Obviously, it won't always be at the front of his mind but I bet he builds on it over the years. Really valuable article!
Good stuff!! I wonder what you’d tell a kid who’s in the opposite position. That is, my son. He’s starting on anew team in the fall (next week), first time doing travel. I fully expect him to start on the bench and get subbed into RF and bat last. He’s the new kid on a very good team, so it will be different from his rec team where he batted cleanup and played up the middle, (SS, C, P and a little CF).
I think he’s prepared to be “low man on the totem pole” and to work his way up. But I don’t want him to look at the other kids, who are his teammates, and say, I gotta be better than him, or I hope he messes up, or even resign himself and say “I could never be better than him”.
I guess we are getting to that age where you do have to compete with your teammates for playing time and I’m not really sure how to express that on a positive way.